Best MSP Training Programs for Managed Service Providers in 2026

The best MSP training program for a managed service provider's own team holds the courses your techs need, assigns them with a due date, and shows you who finished. Empath Learn, the LMS an MSP buys for its owners and staff, does all three and is built for MSPs. Below it sits next to sixteen other programs in five short tables, every mark backed by the vendor's own material as of October 8, 2026, or by the one exception described below.

The Bottom Line

• For an MSP's own team: Empath Learn. MSP-built courses, certification prep, labs, AI roleplays and the LMS in one $30 seat, with training work posted to your ConnectWise PSA.
• Deepest certification labs: ACI Learning, at $700 per learner per year (about $58 a month), almost twice an Empath seat, with outside catalogs as separate Marketplace packages and nothing on running an MSP.
• Only need an LMS and buying courses elsewhere: TalentLMS, from $119 a month for up to 40 users on yearly billing, platform only.
• Training your clients' staff too: Empath Grow, where each client is its own organization and you set the price.
• Already on Microsoft 365: Viva Learning is included, as a hub, not a program.

How We Compared

We read the vendors' public pages on October 8, 2026; we did not test the products. Credit goes only to what a vendor publishes on its own site. ●Included the page says it is included. ◐Partly partly: a higher tier, a paid add-on, or part of the feature. ○Not credited not credited: not included, or not stated on the vendor's public pages; the vendor may still offer it, and its paragraph says where the gap is. Empath's marks come from its help center and catalog pages, linked below. One row carries its own rule: in the YouTube row, full means a public playlist becomes a course with one lesson per video, half means a single YouTube video or video link can be added to a course, lesson or path.

One exception: the ConnectWise University note comes from our own use as a partner. Empath makes two of these products, and this post says where a rival is stronger.

Empath Learn vs the General Course Libraries

These vendors sell a general catalog with management tools attached. None is built for MSPs, and none of their pages describes a way to post training into a PSA.

Read the full comparison: Empath vs Udemy Business Empath vs LinkedIn Learning Empath vs Pluralsight Empath vs CBT Nuggets

Udemy Business

A general course marketplace for companies: 28,000+ courses on the Team Plan, due-date assignment, progress reports and AI Role Plays. The labs add-on is Enterprise only, by its plans page. On custom courses, Udemy's own pages disagree: its help center says Enterprise accounts only, its enterprise-training page lists them under Team too, so confirm the plan you would buy. $360 per user per year on the Team Plan (2 to 50). Missing for an MSP: a curriculum built for MSPs, and your own SOPs unless your plan includes custom courses. See Empath vs Udemy.

Pluralsight Skills

A technology library for developer, cloud, security and IT teams: 170+ certification paths and 2,500+ hands-on labs. Managers assign through channels, and a priority can carry a calendar deadline; your own content means external links. $399 per user on Teams (2 to 20); the page prints that as both monthly and yearly, so we do not rank it on price. Missing on its pages: MSP business courses and HR compliance training; its compliance courses cover security and privacy rules. See Empath vs Pluralsight.

ACI Learning ITPro

Formerly ITProTV, and the pick for an MSP whose main need is deep certification labs: practice exams, Skill Labs and 300+ certification courses. The free admin seat assigns courses and pathways and monitors completion, and custom course upload and creation is a myACI platform feature, not listed in the $700 seat; Coach Maci is in-course AI help, not roleplay. $700 per learner per year ($625 at 8 or more), about $58 a month, almost twice an Empath Learn seat, for the myACI platform and the ITPro library. Sold separately: LMS integrations are an enterprise Growth Plan feature, and outside catalogs (Bigger Brains, ClipTraining and others) are content packages from its own Marketplace, not listed in the $700 seat. Nothing on its pages covers running an MSP.

Cybrary for Teams

A cybersecurity and IT skills platform: paths mapped to CompTIA, ISACA and AWS, with labs and practice exams. Team goals carry a deadline and goal owners get a weekly progress report; custom paths are built from its own catalog, not your content. Teams pricing is not published; the individual plan is $24.58 a month billed yearly. Missing: anything on running an MSP.

LinkedIn Learning

A broad business, creative and technology library (18,000+ courses on the Teams plan): due dates, completion reports, AI coaching and role plays, hands-on practice. Custom upload is documented for the enterprise plan; the Teams pages do not say. $379.88 per license per year on Teams (20 or fewer). Missing: MSP business courses. See Empath vs LinkedIn Learning.

Also in this group, not in the table: CBT Nuggets, an IT certification video library with virtual labs at $59 per learner per month or $599 a year. Groups assign training and run reports; due dates are not documented, and creating your own training takes a separately purchased site license. The same shape as ACI at a lower price.

Empath Learn vs the General LMS Platforms

These platforms manage training more than they supply it. You bring the courses or buy them as an add-on; hands-on labs are a paid add-on at Docebo and an integration at Skilljar and TalentLMS, and none of their pages list MSP courses or a PSA integration.

Read the full comparison: Empath vs TalentLMS Empath vs Absorb LMS Empath vs Trainual

TalentLMS

A cloud LMS for small and mid-size businesses: completion tracking, SCORM and xAPI, an AI course builder and Role Play, currently included from Core up; Learning Paths start on the Grow plan and Automations on Pro.

Ready-made courses cost extra, each from its own source: TalentLibrary (1,000+ short soft-skills, leadership and compliance courses, unlocked as one library at a price set by the plan's user bracket), OpenSesame (50,000+ courses, with a certification prep category, through your own OpenSesame account) or other providers' courses bought à la carte by the learner license or as a full library. From $119 a month for up to 40 users, billed yearly; TalentLibrary raises Core to $151 a month on yearly billing. Missing on its pages: MSP courses and labs of its own; outside virtual labs can connect through LTI 1.3 on Grow and higher plans. See Empath vs TalentLMS.

Absorb LMS

A mid-market and enterprise LMS: due-date reminders, real-time completion status, separately branded portals. Course authoring is built in through Absorb Create, with AI-generated quizzes and no separate authoring license, by Absorb's own account; the Amplify library is a paid extra; its roleplay is marked Coming Soon. Price not published. Certification prep, including CompTIA and Microsoft, sits in the paid Amplify Max library. Missing on its pages: labs and MSP courses. See Empath vs Absorb LMS.

Docebo

An enterprise learning platform: due dates on learning plans, dashboards, AI course creation, AI Roleplay as a paid add-on and a white-labeled design on every plan, with up to 10 extended-enterprise domains on Enterprise. Courses come through its paid Content Marketplace (30,000+), which is where its certification prep sits, and hands-on labs through the paid Docebo Labs by Skillable add-on (1,200+ labs). Price not published. Missing on its pages: MSP courses.

Disco

An AI-first platform for training companies and employee training: assignments with due dates, progress reports, a curriculum builder and branded client academies. No course library, and its roleplay is marked Coming Soon. $399 a month billed yearly for up to 500 members.

Skilljar

A customer and partner education platform for teaching your own product: automated enrollment, learning paths, analytics, SCORM and video upload, one to three academy sites by plan. No bundled courses; virtual labs come through integrations such as Instruqt and Skillable. Price not published.

Also in this group, not in the table: Trainual, small-business SOP and onboarding software with deadlines, completion scores and a paid add-on library of 400+ compliance, safety and soft-skill courses. Its public share link for people outside the account does not track completions or views. Price not published. The closest thing here to Empath's own-courses column, with no technical IT training on its pages. See Empath vs Trainual.

Empath Learn vs MSP-Specific Programs and Free Options

Two programs teach the MSP business itself, and two kinds of free come with licenses you already pay for. Most MSPs start with a third kind of free: no program at all.

Pax8 Academy

Pax8's enablement program for MSPs that buy through its marketplace: free on-demand courses in leadership, finance, sales and professional skills, 50+ paid instructor-led classes, peer groups and 1:1 coaching. Partners only; its technical training centers on products Pax8 sells, such as Microsoft and AWS, and its Azure and security pages offer hands-on labs inside Academy; its On-Demand page mentions progress tracking. Prices sit inside the Pax8 app. A program you attend, not a platform you run. See Empath vs Pax8 Academy.

MSSP University

A training company for MSP and MSSP owners and sales teams: CEO and sales bootcamps, CMMC readiness, service desk and leadership classes, with instructor-led role play (live, not AI, so the roleplay row stays empty). It runs on its own TalentLMS portal. Price not published.

Microsoft Viva Learning

A learning hub inside Teams, included with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium, E3 and E5. You get Microsoft Learn, a 300-course LinkedIn Learning sampler and your SharePoint files. The Viva Learning license, $4 per user per month paid yearly, adds recommending content with a due date, completion tracking, learning paths, academies and other providers; each provider also needs its own subscription. You get what you pay for, and here the price is zero.

Vendor Universities (ConnectWise, Kaseya, Nerdio, Microsoft Learn)

Free training each vendor runs on its own product. ConnectWise University: 40+ courses, free for partners; a Home Admin assigns and runs progress reports (from our own use). Kaseya University: introductory technician courses free, higher certifications paid; a Master role sees progress, nothing is assigned. Nerdio University: for Nerdio Manager customers; entry and sales certifications free. Microsoft Learn: free to anyone; Plans assign and show progress; Microsoft certifications only. See Microsoft Learn on its own or with Empath. They teach the tool, not the trade.

Shoulder to Shoulder: The Option With No Program

Most MSPs start here. A senior tech sits beside the new hire, the SOPs live in SharePoint and vendor portals teach the products. It adds no subscription, and it teaches real tickets with real judgment, which no course can.

What it lacks is a plan. Each hire learns what the senior tech had time to show that week, nobody owns the follow-up and the record of who learned what lives in someone's head. When that tech leaves, the know-how that was never written down leaves too. Keep the shoulder-to-shoulder time and put the rest in a path: Empath Learn's New Hire Onboarding or Tier 1 template, your SOPs as lessons and due dates your service manager can check. See Empath vs Shadow Training.

What Each Price Buys

Seat prices only compare when you know what is in the seat. Only prices shown on a vendor's public page appear here.

Empath's $30 buys the LMS, the MSP courses, the Curated Collection, the labs and the roleplays in one seat. Udemy Business and LinkedIn Learning cost about the same for a general library with lighter LMS tools. ACI costs almost twice as much for the deepest labs. TalentLMS is the cheapest paid seat in this table because it is the platform alone; adding TalentLibrary courses raises Core to $151 a month on yearly billing. Not in the table: CBT Nuggets at $59 a learner a month or $599 a year.

Where Empath Learn Fits

Empath Learn is the one column with a filled mark in every row: an MSP-focused course library and an LMS in one, down to putting the training work in your PSA. Row by row, with the source for each:

• Built for MSPs: more than 200 courses Empath films and publishes with industry experts, most of them MSP owners and leaders.
• Certifications your techs earn themselves: CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+ courses, more than 1,400 Certification Tracks courses and 70+ current Microsoft certifications.
• More than 40 hands-on labs: CompTIA, Cisco, Azure and AWS, programming. Fewer than ACI or Pluralsight list, which is why the labs pick is ACI.
• 200+ AI roleplays with instant feedback; managers see the results.
• The Curated Collection: more than 14,000 courses from over 20 publishers, including Skillsoft and The MARCOM Group, in every Learn seat.
• Assign a course with a due date to a person or a team; a pathway assigns every course in it (how assigning works). The progress dashboard shows who finished, by group.
• Course authoring is built in, no separate authoring product or upgrade: a Content Admin writes lessons as video, text (paste an SOP) or embed, adds knowledge checks with feedback, a passing score and a time limit, and groups courses into pathways. Paste a public YouTube playlist and Empath builds a draft course with one lesson per video in playlist order; a single YouTube or Vimeo video becomes a lesson. SCORM uploads can be turned on.
• Ready-made pathway templates: the Tier 1 technician and Account Manager templates, plus Project Delivery Basics, Cybersecurity Fundamentals and New Hire Onboarding, each copied into your tenant and filled with your SOPs.
• Microsoft Learn sync: connect your Microsoft 365 tenant and Empath picks up Learn progress each day for assigned content.
• Your PSA: once an admin sets up the ConnectWise PSA integration, Empath creates a ticket for each assigned course every week, adds the learning time to the prior week's ticket and marks it complete when the course is done. The help center calls it a minimum viable implementation (article dated December 1, 2025) and lists the limits: assigned courses only, Empath and ConnectWise emails must match exactly, one ConnectWise company per tenant, no custom ticket titles or notes yet. On any other PSA, the recurring training ticket guide is the manual version.

Where a rival is stronger, and what it costs you. ACI Learning and Pluralsight list far more labs than our 40-plus: ACI at $700 a learner a year, Pluralsight at $399 a user on Teams. TalentLMS costs less per seat if you only need an LMS and will buy or bring every course yourself, and Viva Learning costs nothing extra on Microsoft 365 if a learning hub is enough.

Empath Learn covers most of the skills an MSP needs. If your team still wants another provider's content, Empath can embed it in a lesson where the provider allows framing, or you can request an integration through Empath's feature requests. A second subscription is rarely cost-effective for an MSP; if you feel otherwise, partner success will work through it with you.

Which One Fits Your MSP

1. An MSP that trains shoulder to shoulder and has never picked a program: keep the senior tech beside each new hire and put the rest in an Empath Learn path, starting from the New Hire Onboarding template. See Empath vs Shadow Training.
2. A 10-person MSP where the owner is the trainer: one bill, one place to assign and see who finished, tickets in the PSA. Empath Learn, starting with the trial; build one pathway first, from the Tier 1 template.
3. A 30-tech MSP with a service manager: assign by role, track the team, keep your SOPs in the same place. Empath Learn; add ACI Learning for a security team that needs deep labs, knowing the seat costs almost twice as much. Settle who owns the follow-up first.
4. A Pax8 partner on a tight budget: Pax8 Academy for business skills, your vendor universities for the tools, Viva Learning if you are on Microsoft 365. Still missing: CompTIA prep, a home for your SOPs, one place that tracks it all.
5. An MSP that wants to sell training to clients: Empath Grow, one client at a time, with Grow Lite for the clients who only need a library.

To see how Empath Learn assigns and tracks training, book a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Rule to Decide By

Courses only, buy a library. Run your own training only, buy an LMS. Both, for an MSP, buy the one built for MSPs that does both: Empath Learn, the column with a filled mark in every row. Start the 14-day free trial; everything in Learn is in it, the Curated Collection included.

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